Award-winning journalist Grantlee Kieza has held senior editorial positions at The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph and The Courier-Mail. He is a Walkley Award finalist and the author of twelve acclaimed books, including the recent bestsellers Mrs Kelly, Monash and Banjo. His newest book is Macquarie, a lively and engaging portrait of a towering and complex figure of Australian colonial history: Lachlan Macquarie.
Today, he’s on the blog to answer some of our questions about the new book. Read on!
Grantlee Kieza
Tell us about your book, Macquarie.
GK: Macquarie charts the life of a poor boy from a remote corner of Scotland who became, to his admirers, the Father of Australia. He inherited a penal colony in chaos from the infamous Captain Bligh and set about transforming it into his vision as the jewel in the crown for the British Empire and a land he wanted to be renamed “Australia”. While his masters in the British Government wanted New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land to be places of terror and torment for the refuse of the British prison system, Macquarie saw a land of opportunity. He saw its potential as an economic powerhouse and the home of a fair go. His desire to give convicts a second chance and to advance the cause of emancipation made him many powerful enemies, but he wanted Australia to be a place where people could prosper because of their potential and not rot because of their past. This is also the story of an ambitious and sometimes shifty army officer, who would rort the system to help many of his poor relatives, a passionate lover who pined over the death of his first wife for years and who, with his second wife, formed the first great power couple of Australian life. This is the story of a man who had a great regard for Aboriginal people but was willing to use terror to subjugate them if they bucked his rule. This is the story of a hard-drinking lover, fighter, autocrat and visionary, a man of his times who put Australia on the path to prosperity.
Lachlan Macquarie is a complex and divisive figure. What made you want to write a biography about him?
GK: Pretty much because he is a complex and divisive figure. On one hand you have this big-hearted Governor giving plum jobs such to former convicts and on the other hand ordering that Aboriginal people who don’t toe the line are to be shot and hung from trees. His back story is fascinating too. Growing up on small rocky outcrop off the Scottish coast he went off to wars against George Washington’s American patriots and against Napoleon. In India, he fought against the forces of Tipu Sultan and an assortment of “rebellious Rajas”; he ate from the Garden of Eden and drove a carriage at breakneck speed across the Russian Steppes. He witnessed the British destruction of Copenhagen, declared war on Indigenous Australians and helped set Australia on the path to nationhood. More than 200 years after he arrived in Sydney to inherit a colony in chaos there are reminders everywhere throughout Australia of Macquarie’s legacy, from the grand buildings he ordered, to the many places, ports and rivers named after him, to the radio network that bears his name and the investment back that uses the symbol of his holey dollar as its logo.
How has writing this book changed your initial view of his legacy?
GK: He is such a contradiction in himself. I think he did great things for the foundation of Australia and for our national ethos of giving everyone a fair shake. But he had many human failings. He could not handle criticism or advice that differed from his own opinion, and he may have been psychologically unhinged and no doubt under immense pressure to show the colony who was boss when he initiated the massacre of Aboriginal people near Appin in 1816. Yet at the same time, in many respects, he felt he had a great respect for Indigenous Australians and tried to foster cordial relations with Australia’s first people.
The Major-General Lachlan Macquarie monument at Hyde Park, Sydney
What is the biggest challenge you faced while writing this book?
GK: The first challenge was to fit such a big life into one book. Macquarie was almost 50 when he arrived to take command of the settlement at Sydney but he had already seen and done so much in his lifetime, fighting wars around the globe, falling in love, losing his wife, finding great romance again and then suffering the death of his first child. The other great challenge was to interpret Macquarie’s diaries through the lens of an unbiased eye, given that others of the time did not see him in the way he portrayed himself.
What’s your research process like for writing a biography?
GK: I try to read as much primary source material as possible – in this case as much of Lachlan and Elizabeth Macquarie’s journals and letters as possible. I also try to visit at least some of the places key to the story, like Macquarie’s birthplace on Ulva and his burial place on Mull. While Macquarie’s time in Australia was the early 19th century, it was also fascinating to read newspaper reports from decades later of people reflecting on having seen him during their childhoods in Sydney.
You’ve written books about some incredible figures of history – people like General Sir John Monash, Banjo Paterson, and Ellen Kelly. What is it about these people that still captivates the Australian public?
GK: All of them contributed enormously to the unique Australian character. Through his driving ambition in a new nation, Monash showed the world that the Australian could be as clever and capable as any great military or business brain from England or America; Paterson romanticised the Australian bush and the characters who tried to tame it, creating timeless national heroes. Mrs Kelly’s sense of rebelliousness and rage against unjust authority echoes through Australian attitudes to this day. An earlier book I wrote about the Queensland aviator Bert Hinkler celebrated the courage and ingenuity of Australians who made the world a better place.
Why do you think it’s important that we still learn and read about colonial figures like Lachlan Macquarie?
GK: It helps remind us of who we are and where we came from, the factors that shaped the birth of Australia and the many traits that shaped the character of our nation as a whole. One of Macquarie’s great strengths was his push for a fair go for anyone who wanted to work hard and make a future for themselves, regardless of their past. He wanted to encourage potential and reward effort and I think that influence helped make Australia the nation that it is.
What do you hope readers will discover in Macquarie?
GK: That whatever their preconceptions about him, Macquarie was a flesh and blood man of great human strengths and weaknesses. He walked, even named the same streets that many Australians walk daily, he cried real tears, shed real blood and he suffered and triumphed in equal measure. I hope they realise that he added enormously to the rich tapestry of Australian history. And that he loved his country even before it was a country.
And finally, what’s up next for you?
GK: My next book will centre on the extraordinary life of botanist and adventurer Joseph Banks and the birth of Australia. Maybe then a detailed study of the life of Henry Lawson or a full-scale biography of Lawrence Hargrave and the birth of aviation. I’m always fascinated by the role of Australians in the wider history of the world.
Thanks Grantlee!
Macquarie
Lachlan Macquarie is credited with shaping Australia's destiny, transforming the harsh, foreboding penal colony of New Holland into an agricultural powerhouse and ultimately a prosperous society.
He also helped shape Australia's national character. An egalitarian at heart, Macquarie saw boundless potential in Britain's refuse, and under his rule many former convicts went on to become successful administrators, land owners and business people. However, the governor's ambitions for the colony (which he lobbied to have renamed 'Australia') brought him into conflict with the continent's original landowners...
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